History, anything goes, including pictures

2 May 2011 – Osama bin Laden, suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man, is killed by the United States special forces in Pakistan.

Usama ibn Mohammed ibn Awad ibn Ladin (March 10, 1957 – May 2, 2011) was a Saudi Arabian. Bin Laden's father was Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, a Saudi billionaire from Hadhramaut, Yemen. His mother, Alia Ghanem, was from a secular middle-class family based in Latakia, Syria. He was born in Saudi Arabia and studied economics and business administration at the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah until 1979, when he joined Mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

A 14-year-old Osama Bin Laden on a visit to Oxford in 1971 with two of his brothers and two Spanish girls as they attended a language course. BBC.

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Bin Laden helped to fund the Mujahideen by funnelling arms, money and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and gained popularity among many Arabs. In 1988, he formed al-Qaeda. He was banished from Saudi Arabia in 1992, and shifted his base to Sudan, until U.S. pressure forced him to leave Sudan in 1996. After establishing a new base in Afghanistan, he declared a war against the United States, initiating a series of bombings and related attacks worldwide, including the al-Qaeda September 11 attacks in the United States. Bin Laden was on the American FBI lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the United States, as the FBI offered a $25 million bounty in their search for him.

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On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, where he lived with a local family from Waziristan, during a covert operation called Operation Neptune Spear conducted by members of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and CIA SAD/SOG operators on the orders of U.S. President Barack Obama.
 

On March 11, 1927, what is believed to be the first robbery of an armored truck occured in Bethel Park, PA. The Flathead Gang, led by Paul Jaworski (sometimes spelled Jawarski) detonated explosives placed in a hole dug in the road as the armored truck passed by. The truck overturned and a security car following it drove into the crater left by the blast. Apparently no one in either vehicle was seriously hurt. The blast forced open the doors of the armored truck and the gang got away with $104,000 (a coal company payroll), although two were captured the next day. Jaworski eventually was shot and wounded later trying to escape police, then tried for murder in another payroll robbery (one of more than 20 killings he was suspected of committing). He was executed in 1929.

The curator of the Brinks History Museum told a WQED reporter that this robbery led the Brinks Company to change the design of its trucks, replacing wooden floors and frames with steel.
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RnR said:
2 May 1945 – The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin during the last stages of World War II.

The Battle of Berlin was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II. No plans were made by the Western Allies to seize the city by a ground operation. The Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, General Eisenhower lost interest in the race to Berlin and saw no further need to suffer casualties by attacking a city that would be in the Soviet sphere of influence after the war.

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The Soviet offensive on Berlin commenced on 16 April 1945, two Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city. On 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, the 1st Belorussian Front led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin.

Russian troops in front of the Reichstag after the battle.

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On 23 April 1945 General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganised Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, along with poorly trained Volkssturm and Hitler Youth members. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army gradually took the entire city. Before the battle was over, Hitler and several of his followers killed themselves. The city's garrison surrendered on 2 May 1945 but fighting continued to the north-west, west, and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on 8 May 1945 as some German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets.
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The German women were so terrified of the red soldiers, many killed themselves rather than left helpless against their revenge.
 

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The extraordinary photo above captured in April 1936, showed the funeral of the German Ambassador Leopold Von Hoesch, with the people clearly giving the Nazi salute on the balcony of the Germany Embassy on Carlton House Terrace, overlooking The Mall. This photo was unearthed for the Discovery Channel programme: ‘Wartime London with Harry Harris’, a London cab driver and historian who has driven a taxi for two decades.

The Grenadier Guards and Nazi soldiers march together down The Pall Mall carrying a swastika-draped coffin; well-liked by most British statesmen, von Hoesch was considered as the best hope for enhancing the Anglo-German relations during the early 1930s. He was a career diplomat but no Nazi; he would even be disturbed by this display of Nazi pageantry at his funeral — he frequently feuded with Hitler over disarmament and vocally denounced Hitler’s invasion of Rhineland. If it were not for this untimely death, it was most likely that he would have been recalled……………..
 
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The Roman amphitheatre’s floor was removed in the late 1800s when archaeologists began to excavate the subterranean levels of the structure. Photograph: Domenico Stinellis/AP

The floor of Rome’s Colosseum, where gladiators once fought against each other and wild animals, is set to be restored to its former glory.

The Roman amphitheatre, completed under Emperor Titus in AD80, once had a wooden floor covered with sand that was built on top of a network of tunnels and rooms where gladiators and animals waited before entering the arena.

The new, hi-tech stage will be able to quickly cover or uncover the underground networks below, allowing them to be protected from the rain or to be aired out.

The floor would be sustainable and reversible, meaning it can be removed if plans for the Colosseum, which was built to host up to 60,000 spectators, change in the future.
 
mellowyellow said:
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The extraordinary photo above captured in April 1936, showed the funeral of the German Ambassador Leopold Von Hoesch, with the people clearly giving the Nazi salute on the balcony of the Germany Embassy on Carlton House Terrace, overlooking The Mall. This photo was unearthed for the Discovery Channel programme: ‘Wartime London with Harry Harris’, a London cab driver and historian who has driven a taxi for two decades.

The Grenadier Guards and Nazi soldiers march together down The Pall Mall carrying a swastika-draped coffin; well-liked by most British statesmen, von Hoesch was considered as the best hope for enhancing the Anglo-German relations during the early 1930s. He was a career diplomat but no Nazi; he would even be disturbed by this display of Nazi pageantry at his funeral — he frequently feuded with Hitler over disarmament and vocally denounced Hitler’s invasion of Rhineland. If it were not for this untimely death, it was most likely that he would have been recalled……………..
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Very interesting story, thanks Mellowyellow.
 
mellowyellow said:
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The Roman amphitheatre’s floor was removed in the late 1800s when archaeologists began to excavate the subterranean levels of the structure. Photograph: Domenico Stinellis/AP

The floor of Rome’s Colosseum, where gladiators once fought against each other and wild animals, is set to be restored to its former glory.

The Roman amphitheatre, completed under Emperor Titus in AD80, once had a wooden floor covered with sand that was built on top of a network of tunnels and rooms where gladiators and animals waited before entering the arena.

The new, hi-tech stage will be able to quickly cover or uncover the underground networks below, allowing them to be protected from the rain or to be aired out.

The floor would be sustainable and reversible, meaning it can be removed if plans for the Colosseum, which was built to host up to 60,000 spectators, change in the future.
Click to expand...
Such an imposing structure with such a brutal history. Photo my son took when visiting there.
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3 May 1481 – The largest of three earthquakes strikes the island of Rhodes and causes an estimated 30,000 casualties.

The island of Rhodes lies on part of the boundary between the Aegean Sea and African tectonic plates. Historically, Rhodes was famous worldwide for the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Medieval Old Town of the City of Rhodes has been declared a World Heritage Site. Today, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe.

The Colossus of Rhodes as imagined in a 16th-century engraving by Martin Heemskerck, part of his series of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes today.

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The 1481 Rhodes earthquake occurred at 3:00 in the morning on 3 May. The estimated magnitude was 7.1. It triggered a small tsunami, which caused local flooding. There were an estimated 30,000 casualties. It was the largest of a series of earthquakes that affected Rhodes, starting on 15 March 1481, continuing until January 1482. Sources refer to destruction in Rhodes Town; the Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes was sufficiently damaged to require immediate rebuilding. The damage caused by the earthquakes led to a wave of rebuilding after 1481. Damage from the tsunami was said to be greater than from the earthquake.
 
3 May 1942 – Japanese naval troops invade Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo that results in the Battle of the Coral Sea between Japanese forces and forces from the United States and Australia.

The invasion of Tulagi, on 3–4 May 1942, was part of Operation Mo, the Empire of Japan's strategy in the South Pacific and South West Pacific Area in 1942. The plan called for Imperial Japanese Navy troops to capture Tulagi and nearby islands in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. The occupation of Tulagi by the Japanese was intended to cover the flank of and provide reconnaissance support for Japanese forces that were advancing on Port Moresby in New Guinea, provide greater defensive depth for the major Japanese base at Rabaul, and serve as a base for Japanese forces to threaten and interdict the supply and communication routes between the United States and Australia and New Zealand. Without the means to effectively resist the Japanese offensive in the Solomons, the British Resident Commissioner of the Solomon Islands protectorate and the few Australian troops assigned to defend Tulagi evacuated the island just before the Japanese forces arrived on 3 May 1942.

Japanese officers and petty officers of the 3rd Kure Special Naval Landing Force that seized Tulagi in May 1942. Location of Tulagi Island.

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The next day, however, a U.S. aircraft carrier task force en route to resist the Japanese forces advancing on Port Moresby struck the Japanese Tulagi landing force in an air attack, destroying or damaging several of the Japanese ships and aircraft involved in the landing operation. Nevertheless, the Japanese troops successfully occupied Tulagi and began the construction of a small naval base. Over the next several months, the Japanese established a naval refuelling, communications, and seaplane reconnaissance base on Tulagi and the nearby islets of Gavutu and Tanambogo, and in July 1942 began to build a large airfield on nearby Guadalcanal.

Because these activities threatened the Allied supply and communication lines in the South Pacific, Allied forces counter-attacked with landings of their own on Guadalcanal and Tulagi on 7 August 1942, initiating the critical Guadalcanal campaign and a series of combined arms battles between Allied and Japanese forces that, along with the New Guinea campaign, decided the course of the war in the South Pacific.
 
3 May 2007 – The 4 year old British girl Madeleine McCann disappears in Praia da Luz, Portugal.

Madeleine Beth McCann, born 12 May 2003, disappeared on the evening of 3 May 2007 from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal, sparking what one newspaper called "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". Her whereabouts remain unknown.

The disappearance has attracted sustained international interest and saturation coverage in the UK.

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Madeleine was on holiday from the UK with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, her two-year-old twin siblings, and a group of family friends and their children. She and the twins had been left asleep at 8.30 pm in the ground-floor apartment, while the McCanns and friends dined in a restaurant 55 metres away. The parents checked on the children throughout the evening, until Madeleine's mother discovered she was missing at 11.00 pm.
 
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Elvis Presley with his parents Gladys and Vernon in Tupelo, Mississippi, 1937
In Tupelo, Mississippi, shortly before dawn, in a two-room house built by her husband, Vernon Presley, and her brother-in-law, Gladys Presley gives birth to twin sons. The first, Jessie Garon, is born stillborn. The second, Elvis Aaron, is born alive and healthy. Elvis would be their only child.
 
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Giant Cardon Cactus in Mexico, circa 1895

The French naturalist and historian Leon Diguet realized six scientific expeditions in Mexico between 1893 and 1913... With a few prints in the world, this picture offers a spectacular example of a species of cacti: the Giant Cardon, about 8 meters high and about 10 tons.
 
4 May 1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland, now Manhattan Island.

Peter Minuit (1580/1585 –1638) was from Wesel in Germany. Minuit and his family joined the Dutch West India Company, probably in the mid-1620s. Minuit was sent to New Netherland in 1625 to search for tradable goods other than the animal pelts, the major product coming from New Netherland at the time. He returned in the same year, and in 1626 was appointed the new director of New Netherland. He sailed to North America aboard the See Meeuw and arrived in the colony on 4 May 1626.

Peter Minuit. The Purchase of Manhattan Island, 1909 drawing.

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A common account states that Minuit purchased Manhattan for $24 worth of trinkets. A letter written by Dutch merchant Peter Schaghen to directors of the Dutch East India Company stated that Manhattan was purchased "for the value of 60 guilders" in goods.

Manhattan later became the site of the Dutch city of New Amsterdam, and the borough of Manhattan of modern-day New York City.
 
4 May 1826 – English-born bushranger Matthew Brady and cannibal Thomas Jeffries are hanged at the Campbell Street Gaol in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land.

Matthew Brady was a convict who arrived in Australia in the Juliana, on 29 December 1820. In 1824, he was part of a group of escapees from Sarah Island, who sailed a whaleboat around the south coast to the River Derwent, in Tasmania, and spent the next two years as bushrangers. Brady was considered a gentleman, who rarely robbed or insulted women. After Brady's gang held up Sorell and captured the local garrison, in which the garrison commander, Lieut. William Gunn was shot in the arm, which was subsequently amputated, Lieut. Governor Arthur posted rewards for the capture of Brady and his gang. Eventually, one of his gang members, an ex-convict name Cowan, betrayed him for a pardon.

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Brady was hanged on 4 May 1826, at the old Hobart gaol. Four other bushrangers were hanged with him, including Thomas Jeffries the cannibal. Brady complained bitterly at being hanged alongside Jeffries, who was, as Brady pointed out, an informer as well as a cannibal and mass murderer. Brady's cell had been filled with flowers from the ladies of Hobart Town, which tends to support his claim to be a "Gentleman Bushranger".

Thomas Jeffries aka Mark Jeffries, was a bushranger, serial killer, a violent sexual offender, baby-killer and cannibal. On 31 December 1825, Jeffries and three convicts, Perry, Russell and Hopkins, escaped from the Launceston Watch House. The four convicts ran out of food, whereupon they turned on Russell, killed him and ate part of his body. According to the Hobart Town Gazette of 27 January 1826, when asked what he then did with the remainder of Russell's corpse, Jeffries said it was cut into steaks and fried up with the mutton from a sheep they stole.
 
4 May 1904 – The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal, taking over from the French.

France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States formally took control of the canal property on 4 May 1904, inheriting from the French a depleted workforce and a vast jumble of buildings, infrastructure, and equipment, much of it in poor condition.

President Theodore Roosevelt sits in the cab of a crane during a visit to the canal construction site, 1906.

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On 6 May 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed John Findley Wallace, formerly chief engineer and finally general manager of the Illinois Central Railroad, as chief engineer of the Panama Canal Project. Overwhelmed by the disease-plagued country and forced to use often dilapidated French infrastructure and equipment, as well as being frustrated by the overly bureaucratic ICC, Wallace resigned abruptly in June 1905. He was succeeded by John Frank Stevens, a self-educated engineer who had built the Great Northern Railroad. One of Stevens' first achievements in Panama was in building and rebuilding the housing, cafeterias, hotels, water systems, repair shops, warehouses, and other infrastructure needed by the thousands of incoming workers.

Opening of the Panama Canal with the passage of SS Ancon, 15 August 1914.

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Colonel William C. Gorgas had been appointed chief sanitation officer of the canal construction project in 1904. Gorgas implemented a range of measures to minimise the spread of deadly diseases, particularly yellow fever and malaria, which had recently been shown to be mosquito-borne. After two years of extensive work, the mosquito-spread diseases were nearly eliminated. Nevertheless, despite all this effort, about 5,600 workers died of disease and accidents during the U.S. construction phase of the canal.
 
4 May 1953 – Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.

The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.

The Old Man and the Sea first edition. Spencer Tracy film.

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On 4 May 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
 
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Empress Frederick with her mother Queen Victoria after the death of Frederick III 1888

In 1858, Vicky married the future German Emperor Prince Frederick William of Prussia. Her family hoped the marriage would help usher in a liberal Germany. Although she had eight children (including the future Kaiser Wilhelm II), Vicky’s influence in her new country was limited, as her husband’s reign as Emperor lasted only three months before he died from throat cancer in 1888.

Vicky then retired from public life and grew closer to her mother, maintaining a constant correspondence that totalled nearly 8000 letters. Vicky outlived Queen Victoria by only six months, dying from breast cancer in 1901.
 
5 May 1818 – Political philosopher Karl Marx was born in Prussia.

Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist. Born in Trier to a middle-class family, Marx studied law and Hegelian philosophy. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile in London, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings.

His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, and the three-volume Das Kapital.

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His political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history and his name has been used as an adjective, a noun and a school of social theory. His work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marx's work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.
 
5 May 1821 – Emperor Napoleon dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena.

Napoléon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821) was a French statesman and military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. As Napoleon, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 until 1814, and again briefly in 1815 during the Hundred Days War. Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, building a large empire that ruled over continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815.

The Death of Napoleon. By Charles de Steuben, painting commissioned by Colonel de Chambure, a leader in the Napoleonic campaigns, 1829.

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His first exile in 1814 was on the island of Elba from which he escaped on on 26 February 1815. After surrendering, the British then sent him into exile again on the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon was moved to Longwood House there in December 1815; it had fallen into disrepair, and the location was damp, windswept and unhealthy. In February 1821, Napoleon's health began to deteriorate rapidly, and he reconciled with the Catholic Church. He died on 5 May 1821, after confession, Extreme Unction and Viaticum in the presence of Father Ange Vignali. His last words were, France, l'armée, tête d'armée, Joséphine , translated as “France, the army, head of the army, Joséphine”.

In 1840, Louis Philippe I obtained permission from the British to return Napoleon's remains to France. On 15 December 1840, a state funeral was held in Paris. When his tomb was completed in 1861, Napoleon's remains were interred in a porphyry stone sarcophagus in the crypt under the dome at Les Invalides. Pictured ... Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides.

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